The crossing of paths.

The science wing is separated from the main building by a gated courtyard and double doors at each end, and one of each is locked from the outside. This equates to congestion between classes until someone has the sense to open the other door from the inside and the fact that, unless I make a point to reach around and pop open the other door (which I have done), I am forced to let my ex-boyfriend hold a door open for me on occasion.

I dislike the fact that I still see this boy as a major source of trauma in my life. Granted, I'm much better off than I was months ago. I am, largely, past it. I am no longer a wreck as a result of his general idiocy, and I have passed the point where I notice what color shirt he is wearing every day (it thrills me).

Still, it frustrates me. I want to be over the fact that I let this boy into my life and he hurt me. I want it to dissipate magically, and worse, I find myself thinking about myself in relation to the opposite sex. I find myself thinking that I want that again, that feeling of elation and hope.

And I do, of course. I am a teenage girl. I am also human (yes, you are rightly shocked).

There was a moment this morning that we rounded a corner at the same time, and in the second that we crossed paths I could have sworn I felt the inches hovering between us. A split second, I thought.

It's silly, maybe.

I find myself wishing I were more than I am, and that just doesn't work.

Without.

I have spent my day furiously trying to edit essays for college applications, and while I suppose I could be worse off, this hasn't left me in the best state. Not content with writing a cookie cutter essay waxing poetic on the gloriousness that is my granny/first pet/second cousin Albert, I singlehandedly chose to delve into the deep grove of my soul and pull out what might or might not be meaning. And as if the process of applying to colleges were not frazzling enough, the fact of this alone would be enough to unhinge me.

I don't regret writing the essays, exactly, but the subjects are so difficult for me that even thinking about them makes me dizzy.

Words are like pieces of a puzzle to me. I don't know that I have any concrete control over them, but it is only as I locate and rearrange my words that I begin to find my own meaning. Too few and I am blank, too many and I am furiously scribbling in margins already filled. Balance and I are either unacquainted or jolly well pissed off with one another.

I really don't want to muse on life and bewilderment right now, but this is all I can find. I wish I could feel within myself that everything will be fine.

It has never been fine. It will be fine, but it has never been fine.

"Because we hate each other so much?"

It is on my usual bench at lunch that I find myself wanting for words.

I face away from the crowds, groups magnetized and reminding me of television specials focused on penguins in winter.

But it isn't winter, even. We're working on autumn still, only just cold enough for a sweater in early morning.

Clear blue sky finds its way around parked cars and through trees, and fallen leaves (there are very few, as trees don't shed for the winter here) are tossed by the breeze.

I have to turn to see what's going on, but it isn't anything I can relate to. People are situated in their groups and I merely sit here, my sweater folded beside me. Every minute or so someone turns the corner outside the cafeteria and passes me on a patch of sidewalk.

I don't have the courage or desire to join the group I try to associate with across the quadrangle; Dobbin is close at hand, and this is my only alone time all day. When it gets colder I may have to relegate myself to the library at lunch like last year, but I'd like to avoid it. I'd like this weather to stay, because it helps me feel alive.

I can use all the help I can get.

In Psychology the desks have been realigned into rows and I have to navigate where I will sit.

"Am I chairless?" I ask the members of my group, thinking I may have to sit on the other side of the room.

"No," one of them says, "Gerry isn't here today, you can sit behind Ruth."

"Best day ever!" I say as I sit, making little of the fact that Dobbin is directly behind me.

Meanwhile, Bowl Cut Boy waves in my direction.

"I know, Peter," I say mournfully, "you're so far away from me."

"I was just saying hello," he says, a little defensively. He sits in the next row, a few seats ahead.

"Hey Peter," says Dobbin, "you want to trade seats?'

"Why?" asks Bowl Cut Boy (aka Peter, though his name is not Peter either).

"Because we hate each other so much?" I say as I swivel around to face Dobbin. I smile tightly and turn back around in my seat, busying myself by putting my sweater back on.

A minute later he gets up and moves across the room, closer to the television that will soon play a fascinating video on blood circulation (demonstrated by tango dancers!).

"I was too alluring," I joke to the Ruth, who sits in front of me. "He hated himself too much so he had to move."

"No, don't make him feel bad. You're just too awesome." She goes along with it, but she's friends with him too. They all are, and though my words make me feel better, it unnerves me that he will say nothing to me directly.

I realize that I am more than this.

I would like to understand this boy. I would like to let go.

I would like a lot of things.

Lost and Found

I haven't fallen out of step with blog writing so much as fallen out of step with blog posting; ideas sprawl across pages every which way in unfinished pieces, and I feel more comfortable commenting on my observances of human behavior than my own feelings.

Only fragments surface and the smallest of things serve to make my heart hurt.

A table to my left is discussing a possible case of incest and my advisory teacher asks them to change the subject; they continue on in quieter voices.

The boy sitting next to me is a transfer student from somewhere I've never heard of (as amusing as it is, my tiny town is a bit of a metropolis when compared to neighboring cities. I mean, we have a mini-Walmart and everything) rumored to have moved here to be near his girlfriend. The truth of this is suspect, but I won't deny my having seen a lot of canoodling going on between classes.

It is easier to make observations than ink of my emotions.

Cute Guy, who I unfriended on Facebook long ago, sat behind me during a (reward!) viewing of Toy Story 3 on Friday, leaning on the back of my chair the whole time in order to chat with the boy to my right. Every once in a while he would say sorry for bothering me while continuing to take up my personal space, and at the end of the movie both of them burst into fake hysterics.

catlovingmathteacher moves a cocky, sweet faced boy to a different desk. On his journey he brings with him a plastic ziploc of cheetos. As he sits down he plucks one from the bag, sets it between his lips and sucks. For a moment I think he wiggles his eyebrows at me.

I am a lost and found of moments.